The go-live is already helping staff to better manage patients over the busy winter period.

The trust’s former ED system ran on old and complex infrastructure and, unlike the MAXIMS patient administration system (PAS), was hard to configure to give staff access to the information they need.

Steven Bloor, chief information officer at the trust, said: “We would not have got through the winter with the system we had in place, so we really pushed to get MAXIMS in when we did.

“The ease of use and the flexibility of the system has been praised by users and we are looking forward to having similar capabilities across the hospital as a whole.”

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals is a long-standing user of IMS MAXIMS clinical technology and is committed to deploying the latest version of the company’s electronic patient record.

The ED go-live will trigger an ambitious digitisation programme that will see the trust replace its PAS, deploy MAXIMS in theatres, and aim to complete the levels of the Digital Health Intelligence Clinical Digital Maturity Index by 2020-21.

The acute trust is also part of the Fylde Coast Local Health Economy, one of 14 multi-speciality community provider vanguards set up to test out new models of healthcare that ‘wrap around’ the patient.

The MAXIMS deployment will be used to help share information across the health and care economy.

Bloor said: “We want to surface information with the clinician where and when they need it, without having to access multiple systems.

The ED go-live was supported by the MAXIMS FIRST CLASS deployment methodology, which focuses on working in collaboration with clinical and support professionals to make sure projects meet the needs of users and the hospital.

The trust used floorwalkers to support staff for the first two weeks. Careful preparation ensured a smooth go-live, even though there were 150 patients in the ED on the day.

“The emergency department is the start of the patient journey, so it is the logical place to begin the deployment of MAXIMS,” Bloor said. “This is now the cornerstone for our wider digital ambitions.”

Shane Tickell, chief executive at IMS MAXIMS, added: “Blackpool Teaching Hospitals provides a strong example of an NHS trust determined to deliver technology that supports both regional and national ambitions for joined up, accountable care, at the same time as responding to the working needs of its staff and their patients.

“This has been an impressive deployment, taking place at a busy time of year for the NHS. But strong project management, planning and collaboration between the trust and our team, has allowed this to happen smoothly, with strong user acceptance and evidence that the technology is already making a difference.”